Orange : Triplets’ Birth Marked by Use of New Procedure

Irvine computer operator Linda Nielsen helped make medical history Sunday evening when she gave birth to triplets.

The baby girls, Jennifer Ann, Christina Marie and Katherine Michelle, were diagnosed as healthy at only 9 weeks’ gestation in an experimental diagnostic technique called chorionic villus sampling, which was used for the first time on the West Coast in Neilsen’s case, according to their obstetrician, Arthur I. Goldstein.

In the procedure, doctors removed a small sample of tissue from the membrane surrounding each of of the three fetuses, and 2 weeks later, Nielsen learned her babies did not have Down’s syndrome or other genetic defects. The procedure is expected to replace amniocentesis, a procedure that is performed much later--at 16 weeks’ gestation.

By Monday afternoon, the babies were reported “doing well” in the special care nursery at St. Joseph Hospital, spokesman Dennis Gaschen said. The babies--still called Baby A, B and C because the Nielsens had not decided which name to give which child--were born by Caesarian section at 6:13, 6:14 and 6:15 p.m. Sunday, Gaschen said.

Baby A weighed 4 pounds, 8 ounces and was l7 1/2 inches long; Baby B was 4 pounds, 6 ounces and l7 1/2 inches long, and Baby C was 3 pounds, 13 ounces and 17 1/2 inches long.